Lesbian Poetry

Since the beginning of time writers have expressed their deepest
thoughts and desires through poetry. In poetry, writers have found that
they can express a thought, a memory, a person, a landscape, etc. More
often authors write about love, both physical and mental. Found in this
genre of love is intimate imagery, suggestive language, and exotic
fanticies. Most published love poems express love relationships between
men and women but what most anthologies and collections leave out are those
that imply relationships involving individuals of the same gender,
specifically women. Writers in all literary eras have eloquently described
this romantic love between women. A few of the poets ...

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she chose, and she chose to spend her life
studying the arts on the isle of Lesbos which was a cultural center in the
seventh century BC. Sappho spent a majority of her time here, but she also
traveled extensively through Greece (Robinson 35). She spent time in
Sicily too, because she was exiled due to certain activities of her family.
The residents of Syracuse were so honored of her presence that to pay
homage to her they built a statue of her because she had become a well-
known poet (Cantarello 56).
She was determined a lyrist because her poems were to be performed
with the accompaniment of a lyre. She wrote her own music and adapted the
dominant meter to what is now known as "Sapphic meter," (Robinson 54). She
became one of the Greek lyrists who began writing from the point of view of
the individual instead of the view point of the gods and therefore made her
contributions to lyric poetry in both technique and style (Robinson 55).
She was also the first to write from the ...

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time she was honored immensely. Lesbian coins were
minted with her picture imposed on them and Plato, the great Greek
philosopher, heightened her position from great lyric poet to one of the
muses (Robinson 21). More recently, many poets have cited Sappho as a
strong influence on their work (Cantarella 56). Given the popularity of
her works, it is surprising that just one of her poems is accessible in its
entirety; the rest are in fragments of their original form. Though there
were possibly complete volumes published at one time, over the centuries
due to neglect, natural disasters, and censorship they were lost (Robinson
100). From ancient times up until the present, Sappho has ...

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